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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28134714">Dirty hands</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lightning070/pseuds/Lightning070'>Lightning070</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Tales of two Space Warriors and their Green Womprat [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Mandalorian (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Adorable Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV), Angry Din Djarin, Badass Din Djarin, Dubious Morality, Final showdown, Gen, Gideon Gleeful Is A Creep, POV Din Djarin, Protective Din Djarin, Revenge, Supportive Cara Dune, To Kill or Not to Kill, din djarin's face, final fluff, gideon is a shabuir, the helmet comes off, what if</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 14:53:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,563</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28134714</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lightning070/pseuds/Lightning070</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The air in his helmet is stifling. It reeks of blood. Blood, and something else, less tangible, and yet so solid he can feel it stuck in his throat, hindering his every breath.</p><p>He hasn’t felt it in a long time: the beskar has always kept it sedated, caged into the cold, soothing metal. But the beskar is no more. It still shields his body and head, but it stopped enclosing his heart and soul since the moment he took it off and shed his faith and Creed like an old, tattered cape unable to warm him.</p><p>[Angry Din ftw // I would like to see *the blood* // Bipolar Murdelorian/Dadalorian // English is not my first language!]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Din Djarin &amp; Cara Dune, Din Djarin &amp; Grogu | Baby Yoda</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Tales of two Space Warriors and their Green Womprat [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2091606</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>149</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Dirty hands</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">


        <li>
            A translation of

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/727845">Dirty Hands</a> by _Lightning_.
        </li>

    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So, I was wondering about tomorrow. Like I think half the fandom, and... this thing just wrote itself.<br/>Yeah, I want a showdown. Yeah, I want to see angry Din. yeah, they won't ever replicate this scene 'cause they're professionals and I'm just a sleep-deprived fan getting this off my chest, but I'm glad I did :D</p><p>Also, question tags are my nightmare in English. Be aware of it while reading, and point out anything that feels off/wrong D:</p><p>Enjoy the read ♥</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p>The air in his helmet is stifling. It reeks of blood. Blood, and something else, less tangible, and yet so solid he can feel it stuck in his throat, hindering his every breath.</p><p>He hasn’t felt it in a long time: the beskar has always kept it sedated, caged into the cold, soothing metal. But the beskar is no more. It still shields his body and head, but it stopped enclosing his heart and soul since the moment he took it off and shed his faith and Creed like an old, tattered cape unable to warm him.</p><p>So he feels it. That scorching, fierce anger boiling in his stomach, bubbling up like liquid fire through his every vein, seething through his teeth and nostrils. It tingles in his fingertips, eager to wield the blade and deal the final blow, sinking it to the hilt in Gideon’s exposed throat.</p><p>The Moff’s eyes remain as cold, unblinking shards of deep space even then, even as Din has him pinned down with his knees weighing on his broken arms and a sizzling blade singing the tender skin over his jugular. He almost sneers, under the mask of cuts and bruises Din put on his face – mirroring his own under the helmet.</p><p>He smiles because he knows he’s broken him in every possible way. That the hologram, tauntingly floating over the holoboard nearby, showing Din Djarin’s face in plain view, is heavy enough a shame to become a victory even in defeat. In Gideon’s mind, that should’ve been the blow to bring him down to his knees, collapsing under his failure as a Mandalorian. It’s fueled his fury instead, something so visceral Din didn’t think he could conjure.</p><p>He doesn’t even know how he managed to bring Gideon down. He only knows that’s his own doing, single-handedly, since no one dared to interfere – that was his fight. His own, Grogu’s, the Tribe’s, the fight of everyone who’s been crushed under Gideon’s Imperial boots.</p><p>Din lets out a breath and it rattles through the vocoder.</p><p>Even without turning his head, he can see his own face, frozen in the exact moment he cast his whole world away because it had been the only Way he could take. There’s an ancestral fear on his bare face, in his widened and anxious eyes, mingled with a sternness that could only be compared with the beskar he’d just shed. Gideon has mocked him about it.</p><p>And everyone has seen his face. Everyone: Cara, and Boba, and Fennec, and another dozen Imperials who won’t be able to recount it. Grogu didn’t see him. He was so weak he couldn’t even open his eyes.</p><p>A fit of rage blinds him, it claws at his self-control and tugs it, trying to tear it apart as easily as he’s about to rip Gideon’s throat open.</p><p>If he were someone else, he’d take his helmet off again to let Gideon see his face, as he kills him. So he can read into his eyes how much what he took from him is really worth. But he wouldn’t understand. He’s already seen that part of him, crystallized in the bluish hologram depicting the exact moment in which he exposed it to the world, and it’s watching them both from the corner.</p><p>But he wants Gideon to have <em>that</em> last picture of him: the cold, unfazed mask of his beskar and the unflinching gaze of his T visor – the only face Gideon was ever supposed to see. He grips the vibroblade’s hilt, grits his teeth, and almost lets out a growl, inebriated by the feeling of being back to be a hunter, instead of a cornered prey.</p><p>He draws a burning breath, bringing oxygen to his red-shrouded brain. He never <em>wanted</em> to kill. Killing is mere collateral damage, a necessary evil, something he does instinctively to protect himself and the ones he cares about. He’s pressing against another boundary now, along with the blade denting Gideon’s skin. And once he oversteps it, he’ll break something far more irreparable than his Creed.</p><p>Gideon seems to know which thoughts thrash about in his head, and his sneer widens, twisted by a cut staining his teeth red – a sneer blending together with his distorted ideals.</p><p> </p><p>“You <em>could</em> do it,” he says, his voice but a wheeze under the pressure on his windpipe. He’s not begging for mercy – he’s taunting him, he’s deliberately mocking something he won’t ever understand with his last breath. “But you know killing me won’t change anything, don't you?”</p><p> </p><p>Din presses his knees harder on his broken arms, eliciting a yelp of pain from the Imperial, and he almost loses his grip on the vibroblade.</p><p>He could let him go and forgo killing a defenseless, unharmed man, preserving at least that last shred of honor. He could stun him and leave him to die in his ship, which is bound to be destroyed anyway. He could do it – and he could give him that infinitesimal possibility of surviving which would risk switching their roles again. Din would be hunted down again by those bloody hands that have robbed everything from him, except for what he’s just taken back.</p><p>And no one will <em>ever</em> take him away again.</p><p> </p><p>“It won't,” he answers, loosening his grip for a moment, feeling a tremble in his aching muscles.</p><p> </p><p>No, killing him won't put his Creed's pieces back together, nor will it ever erease those memory from his and Grogu's minds. A rivulet of blood trickles down his lip. He sees a sparkle of surprise in Gideon’s eyes – of primitive hope. Then Din firmly tightens his fingers again, one after the other, in a ripple as quick as the sharp breath escaping his mouth.</p><p> </p><p>“But you’d only come back after him.”</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>His gauntlets are dripping with blood when he makes to embrace Grogu again. The thought of soiling his light tunic with that red stops him, even if the urge to take him in his arms is so strong it almost splits him in two when he holds it back.</p><p>And still, he does and halts the hurried steps he’s taken as soon as he’s seen Cara with the kid sleeping soundly in her arms, safe on the <em>Slave</em>. She looks at him questioningly, but the rumble of the explosion shaking the ship precedes his answer. He just nods, with a single gesture that encloses the verdict he’s just carried through – as judge, jury, and executioner.</p><p>He steps into the hold and he immediately takes his bloody gauntlets off, his fingers shaky as he lets them fall on the floor. Cara looks at them as if she already understood everything, and she just nods back, sealing that unspoken truth they won’t address again.</p><p>Din lets the air fill his lungs, before clasping his hands around his helmet, and he breathes it out again slowly as it takes it off, welcoming the freshness on his flushed and aching face.</p><p>He hears Cara’s sharp, surprised breath, and sees how she turns her head to avoid looking at him, but he doesn’t care. He took off his helmet in front of the most despicable people in the Galaxy. And everyone has seen him already, even if not in the flesh.</p><p>Everyone but Grogu. And he’s supposed to know his <em>buir’s</em> face.</p><p>He still can’t bring himself to look at him, though. He looks at his helmet instead, at the red-stained visor. A single, dark streak of dried-out blood crosses it. It’s not his. He doesn’t want Grogu to see that when he wakes up – not the indelible mark of what he’s done for him. He wants him to see the <em>other</em> part of what he’s done – the more human, less dark one.</p><p>He rests the helmet on one of the seats and finally reaches for his <em>ad'ika</em> – Cara immediately hands him to him with a fleeting, involuntary look that brushes his face, along with a soft smile he feels forming on his lips as well. He finds her eyes, silently trying to convey that simple <em>it's okay</em>, before he's overwhelmed with sheer emotion as soon as his hands wrap around Grogu.</p><p>He holds his sleeping, tiny body close, in the crook between his shoulder and neck. He feels the new, velvety touch of the kid’s ears against his cheek, and his warmth on his skin. Din closes his eyes and just breathes him in. He <em>really</em> breathes, for the first time since the <em>Crest</em> has been destroyed; since Grogu looked at him from above for the last time; since he broke the Creed; since he gave up a piece of himself to blood.</p><p>He breathes and he holds him as if he could slip from his hands if he only dared to loosen his grip; as if he’s melted into him, filling the hole he just tore in his own soul with what he’s done.</p><p>He keeps cradling him in his palms, feeling his rapid, steady heartbeat. And even though his own hands are stained, and proved themselves too weak to really be an armor for his son, he still wants to believe they’ll be enough, this time. He gently presses his cheek against Grogu’s head, and he swears that oath along with a silent breath.</p><p>The light grip on his thumb and the soft, joyful coo in his ear is the only answer he needs.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Sooo, yes, that was it. Nothing too elaborate, but I hope you enjoyed it. You can think whatever you want about Gideon's death: in my head, Din killed him, but it's meant to be ambiguous.</p><p>Anyway, since the moment Din has had his face scanned, I couldn't stop thinking about how his face is now in an Imperial database... and we all know how Gideon *loves* his info. I wouldn't be surprised if he at least hints at the fact he had to have his face scanned to get the coordinates, if they ever come to talk in person. But we'll see °-°</p><p>Btw, any The Last of Us quote is absolutely intentional. Joel and Din would get along well, I'm sure of it :D</p><p>thank you for reading and leave kudos/comments/whatever you like if you enjoyed it ♥</p></blockquote></div></div>
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